Obama: If I fail, race will not be the reason [View All]

Obama: If I fail, race will not be the reason

By John McCormick and Rick Pearson | Tribune staff reporters
3:26 PM CST, November 9, 2007

JOHNSTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Friday that if he fails to win the Iowa caucuses it will not be because he is a black man.

Asked whether he is getting a fair hearing in a state that is heavily white, Obama said during the taping of an influential, statewide public affairs program that he was.

"I am getting a fair hearing and I will get a fair hearing and I think we are going to win this place," he said during the taping of "Iowa Press." "You have people who are less concerned about race and much more concerned about 'Is this somebody who is really going to be fighting for me?'"

David Yepsen of The Des Moines Register, the state's most influential political columnist, then sought to further clarify.

"If don't do well in the caucuses, we're not going to hear David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and all your spinners telling us, 'Well, Barack Obama didn't do well in Iowa because it's a lily white state,'" Yepsen asked, referring to Obama's top strategist and communications director.
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